Can I use Application Groups with physical servers?

[ejenner]

I've got some testing to do and I'm trying to work out whether or not Application Groups are going to work for me in this scenario.

The potential road-block which I'm unsure about is that all the application servers I want to put into the group are virtualized on Hyper-V but my AD is not virtualized.

So if I wanted to test my application servers in an isolated environment with the ability to actually log onto them... is there a known-good route to achieving this?

Maybe if I were to BMR my PDC to a Hyper-V that would do the job? But can I restore the AD server in a totally isolated environment away from my production network?

[Dima P.]

Hi EJ.

Not possible from backup side of things as backups made with agents are not supported by SureBackup functionality. Added your vote to this feature request. Thanks!

[foggy]

But can I restore the AD server in a totally isolated environment away from my production network?

You can do this manually though, see the "Restoring entire AD infrastructure" section here.